Cameron Barnett: “I’ve lived in Pittsburgh ever since my family moved here in 1996. My parents grew up here but my siblings and I were all born in California—but I credit being raised in Pittsburgh with turning me into the person I am today. Pittsburgh is often associated with blue collar grit, and this still rings true though our steel mills have fallen silent. For me, grit is an ancestral quality of this city. I come from a lineage of black Americans who escaped slavery and Jim Crow and made it to Pittsburgh, only to fight and desegregate and integrate this city during the Civil Rights era of the ’50s and ’60s. In particular, my grandfather Bishop Charles Foggie stands out as a fighter and champion of liberty. I take his legacy as a family torch to be carried, and this informs my writing. My poems largely have to do with race and family, as well as how those two things intersect in my own personal relationships. Pittsburgh is a city that is at once progressive and antiquated, and this is indicative of the Rust Belt—always seeking to get ahead, but hesitant to cast off the past too quickly. This struggle shaped my family, my childhood, my education, and shapes my poetry today.” (website)
